Saturday, December 26, 2015

The suffering of being

Lamentation of Christ

Colijn de Coter

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Photograph by the author

For us, on our level, suffering has three aspects. The first level of suffering is suffering on behalf of myself. The second level is suffering on behalf of others and my community. The third level of suffering is suffering on behalf of God, which is what Gurdjieff was referring to when he discussed human beings evolving to the point that they could take on a portion of the sorrow of His Endlessness.

All three levels of suffering are absolutely necessary. Nothing can be skipped here; it reminds me of the old AA saying, "The elevator to sobriety is out of order. Please use the steps." We live in a world where everyone wants to avoid suffering — and how can anyone blame us? We have surrounded ourselves with technological comforts that allow us to minimize it; we have invented new religious practices that deemphasize it; we want to use logic to understand it. This was the mistake my friend made when she suggested we can become zero and let the love through. (See the last post.) This is an entirely theoretical prospect arrived at through logical deduction about our nature and the nature of God; and while one can reach completely correct theoretical understandings by such methods, they are utterly useless in practical understanding of what we are and what is necessary for us. It's actually a wrong kind of thinking, because it takes on very lofty subjects and pretends that they can be divorced from the realities we live through.

There is a deep and absolute requirement for the confessional in the Catholic Church. Any individual that believes we can do without confessional as part of the religious process — that we can somehow do an end run around our sin and the need to own up to it on the most intense, intimate, and deepest emotional level — is just kidding themselves. There is nothing egoistic about confessional; it is part of the most necessary dissolution of ego. The Buddhists — the real Buddhists, not the feel-good Buddhists — have a similar understanding, as was pointed out in this essay in Shambhala Sun January 2013. I keep referring readership back to that article simply because it doesn't pull any punches and gets us back down to the ground floor practice, which is the same in every real religion.

When connects with a real emotion regarding inner suffering, and true religious feeling arises, all three levels of suffering take place at the same time. They correspond in their own right and in their own way to body — suffering of self and one's physical being and embodiment — emotion — suffering of desire in regard to community and others — and intelligence — suffering on behalf of a higher principle. These three types of suffering, taken together, form a single whole suffering of Being, which is not personal.

Suffering of Being touches on the lowest levels of anguish that are experienced in true religious ecstasy. It is, in its own way, a minor preparation for the complete anguish that is necessary if one wishes to truly surrender. Because it is what one would call three centered suffering, it creates this fourth mind of suffering which is an objective, not subjective, suffering. The three sufferings of our own level are all subjective, because they do not take place at the level of being — each one is just a component of objective suffering, and cannot by itself attain objectivity. This is in the nature of all three centered activities; each of the centers functions in a subjective manner, and it is only when they combine their work at the objectivity can arise, because the combined work passes across the barrier from the natural to the spiritual world, in which a trinity is at work, and the note sol is embodied.

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Recommendations and current reading list

Lee's current reading list (all recommended)

The Iceberg- Marion Coutts. This extraordinary book deserves to be read by every individual engaged in an inner search. The questions it raises about life, death, and relationship are framed by the authors responsibilities to her very young child and her dying husband. This is a book about real work in life, not esoteric theory.

Far From The Tree: Andrew Solomon. Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. Highly recommended.

Inner Yoga, Sri Anirvan—This extraordinary book is essential reading for any serious student of Gurdjieff or Yoga practice. Written at a level of both practical and philosophical discourse well above other contemporary work, Anirvan investigates the deep roots of Yoga practice, theory, and philosophy in a deeply sensitive series of insights. Of particular interest is the extraordinary and challenging piece on Buddhi and Buddhiyoga, which examines the questions of practice, life, and death with an acuity rarely encountered in other work of this nature.

Divine Love and Wisdom, Emmanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg gives us a detailed report on Reality as received from higher sources, reflecting many Truths one would be wise to study carefully. Readers will be astounded by the extraordinary degree of correlation between Swedenborg and Ibn 'Arabi. Many fundamental principles introduced by Gurdjieff are also expounded on in fascinating detail by Swedenborg. All of Swedenborg's works are well worth reading.

The Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom, Ibn 'Arabi. Another real gem, this book ought to be read by every seeker on the spiritual path. If you can only find the time to read one book by Ibn 'Arabi, this ought to be the one. By turns lighthearted, serious, insightful, and ingenius, al 'Arabi introduces us to our inner government character by character, explains their relationships, and indicates how to bring them into a state of harmonious cooperation. Written with love, the book deftly manages to avoid being didactic, delivering instead a sensitive, poetic, and even romantic look at how to organize our inner Being.

The Bezels of Wisdom—Ibn al 'Arabi. A compendium of observations about the nature of "The Reality"—what al 'Arabi calls God— from a 13th century Sufi master. This towering work easily holds its own against—and is worthy of comparison to—13th century masterpieces from other major religious traditions such as Dogen's Shobogenzo and Meister Eckhart's sermons.